Scope and Content Note
The Winston Sharples Music Manuscripts spans a period between 1943 and 1968, roughly corresponding to the years Sharples was active as principal composer for Paramount's animation production branch, Famous Studios. During this twenty-five year period, Sharples composed music for almost 700 animated short films while also serving as music director of Paramount's live action Pacemaker short films, and also contributing to other Paramount film series such as Headliner, Musical Parade, and Paramount News, and longer documentaries - some produced by other companies.
The collection contains approximately 190 Paramount cartoon scores found almost entirely in the form of holographs: particells (a form of lead sheet that contains film dialogue, descriptive action cues, other film frame specific comments and a piano score), full orchestral scores, and instrumental parts. Several photocopied manuscripts contain melodic lines with lyrics, made for Paramount's Screen Song cartoon series, while other pages contain only lyrics. Many cartoons have been identified using either a provided title, particell dialogue, or other means. Other scores are only identified by the unique Paramount job number, an in-house accession number that serves as an identifier and means of providing an approximate theatrical release date. Also included are scores, instrumental parts, musical cues (often composed by associate composer George Steiner) and other incidental music written for several mid-1960s television cartoon series produced by Joe Oriolo and Hal Seeger. These shows include The Mighty Hercules, Flukey Luke, Milton the Monster, and Penny Penguin.
Full scores for several live-action film documentaries and short films are included, such as Paramount's The Grass is Greener and Pacemaker series film Bundle from Brazil (1948). The full score of a six-reel documentary issued by the United States Information Service titled Men of the Forest is included as is a circa 1952 film titled Westinghouse that has no accompanying production details. Another film score present is Land Called New Jersey, produced by Bransby Productions. Sharples' brief foray into composing for television is represented by his music for the 1955 syndicated live action program His Honor, Homer Bell, starring Gene Lockhart and produced by Galahad Productions for NBC Films.
The remaining manuscripts in the collection consist of holograph sketches, lyric sheets, and musical fragments that have been indexed using any available descriptive information from the materials.